


A Tendency to Withhold

by insensible



Series: If only, but also [4]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Arthur is the world's most efficient pickup artist except when it's Eames, Eames is a disaster, Eames makes a pass, M/M, Mal and Arthur have clearly been plotting, Mention of all kinds of things but they don't actually do any of them, No sex but a lot of talk about sex, Not a single helpful tag, Switch Arthur, Verbal Foreplay, mention of BDSM, switch eames, wet from the shower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:01:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25155142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insensible/pseuds/insensible
Summary: It’s a wonderfully loaded question, and the way Arthur’s face meets it—with lazy recognition and a deal of amusement, is extremely promising. “Your profession,” he says, “requires you to read people. I’ve heard you’re pretty good at it. What do you think I like?”
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Series: If only, but also [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1822282
Comments: 5
Kudos: 57





	A Tendency to Withhold

Eames has, since his earliest days, known this unfortunate fact about himself: the more he tells himself that something is a very bad idea the more he’s likely to let it—no, _make_ it—happen. This has led to, variously: a broken leg after jumping out of a window at school, tattooing a phrase from the UNESCO charter along his ribcage because he thought it was funny at the time, a short spell at Her Majesty’s Pleasure and a number of things far, far worse, one of which, in Belize, involved no fewer than six bodies to bury, which buggered his lower back for months.

It’s in Paris that Eames realises his libidinous fascination with Arthur has reached the point that it will reduce him to dust and ashes unless it’s sorted out one way or the other. On a test level yesterday Arthur’s searching inspection of his work had made him slip twice back into himself from the forge he should have been holding.

“Is this a problem I should worry about?” Arthur had asked.

“I’ll be fine. Bit of a hangover,” he lied. “Fucks a bit with my proprioception. Two Advil’llsort it. Don’t fret, darling.”

Arthur accepted this without further comment, which was a little disturbing; Arthur obviously knew he was lying. Apart from that one small mercy, Arthur has not, to say the least, been helpful. Arthur appears to have a side-project in keeping Eames at least half-hard for the duration of this job. His workspace desk is right in front of Eames’ and for the last couple of weeks he has been regularly standing to lean over it to study the papers he’s spread across its surface, and he is always wearing _those_ trousers when he does so. And when he’s considering a problem, Arthur is invariably playing the tip of his fountain pen around his lips and sometimes—god help me, thinks Eames, every time he sees it—actually sucking on it. And then, a fortnight ago, Arthur had emerged from their workspace shower wearing nothing but an extremely meagre towel wrapped around his hips. Eames dragged his eyes back to his research notes, expecting Arthur to walk straight to his room. But Arthur did not. Arthur stopped and proceeded to engage Eames in a long disquisition on in-dream matters—he thinks that was the subject, but who knows, because rivulets of water were being pulled by gravity down the pale expanses of Arthur’s skin and there was a strong scent of _Eau D’Orange Verte_ , and the loose clench of Arthur’s hand holding the towel in place, and all the wet, draggled hairs down his calves, and his bare toes—already dried, Eames noted—were sinking into the carpet, and all he could do was sit there and stare at the toes as the safest option and pray the conversation would soon be over. That night it required half a bottle of Laphroaig to calm him down enough to sleep.

Had it been anyone else Eames would have not only have made a move months ago but would probably have worn out the crush completely and come out the other side. Had it been anyone else he’d have considered the wet-from-the-shower move a come-on as unambiguous as holding up a sign saying FUCK ME. But Arthur is perpetually unreadable, and Eames knows that is part of what feeds his dreadful obsession. It’s not often he meets someone who won’t give up any secrets, consciously or no. Plus, it’s genuinely possible Arthur has no idea how much he is suffering. He’s never once heard anyone speak of Arthur’s romantic history, and despite trying on numerous occasions, has never managed to entice him into any conversation that has given Eames any evidence that he’s _ever_ had sex. At the end of their last job together, he had theorised, with a deal of acceptance and regret, that Arthur sublimates whatever libido he possesses into work. Arthur doesn’t have time for fun, he decided. Arthur considers such things an irrelevancy. Arthur _doesn’t._

Then ten days ago his carefully-constructed theory went to absolute shit. It had been a hot evening, and he’d made a late rendezvous with the team at a bar on the Rue des Archives, found them all sitting around a sticky-topped table minus Arthur. He assumed Arthur was still working, but then Mallorie had leaned across the table conspiratorially, _cooing_ about Arthur, saying he had been _working so hard, so hard_ , and he _needed some down time, some company, yes_?

Eames momentarily wondered if Mal were setting them up. That would work; Mal loves Arthur, and he will do anything for her. And despite the bruise to his ego he was ready to sacrifice himself willingly for her plan — but then she made a little, proud _moué_ and tossed her head back over her shoulder, and Eames saw Arthur sitting at the bar.

What the _fuck_ , he thought. Because he’d seen Arthur there when he walked in, and he hadn’t recognised him. It wasn’t so surprising, perhaps, because Arthur was not behaving like Arthur. His manner was positively louche _._ He was sprawled a little, shoulders loose, head slightly tilted, and his hair, free of pomade, hung soft around his face.

Eames battened back the unwelcome ache in his chest and sat himself down with the team, hoist a smile onto his face, let the drift of conversation wash around him, and watched, over the course of less than a minute, Arthur pick up, with terrifying expertise, an extremely fit Parisian in a leather jacket and loafers. He stared in disbelief as the man murmured something into his ear and Arthur threw his head back and _laughed_ , brushing his hand lightly along this wanker’s arm, and in no time at all they were walking out together. As they passed the table, Arthur smiled mischievously at Mal and she looked prouder then ever, gave him a small, coquettish wave goodbye—and then Arthur’s eyes tracked back over the table until he saw Eames, and his face turned blank and expressionless before he walked his prize away. 

It was not, all told, the best of evenings. The night wasn’t much better. Eames spent most of it staring at the ceiling imagining what, _exactly,_ Arthur was doing, and when he dragged himself into the workspace the next morning, Arthur was back at his desk, _sans_ tie, shirt open at the neck to reveal a proliferation of embarrassingly teenage hickeys. Eames considered this unconscionably cruel behaviour, and spent the next few days speaking to Arthur in monosyllables when he had to speak at all.

Now it’s a light, rainy morning, and Arthur is six feet away fussing over the tiny Gaggia on the workspace countertop, and Eames is watching the bones of his wrists move as he cards the excess grounds from the filter and he knows he is teetering on the edge of ruin. _I’m not going to do it_ , he tells himself, for the hundredth time, and knows that this repeated mantra is a very, very bad sign.

Arthur says he wants to talk to him, drags another chair over to his side. On his desk, Arthur has charts; Arthur apparently wants to discuss what he calls the _entropic acceleration rate_ of various formulations of somnacin, by which he means the tendency of dreams to become chaotic the longer they run, and Eames is finding it hard to follow what he’s saying because being so close to Arthur is making him weak with need. At one point he makes a pun about entropy and empathy. It’s not remotely funny, but Arthur thinks it is, and for the first time in days, he laughs. _Dimples_ , Eames observes, hopelessly. _Those fucking dimples._ And that’s when the dam breaks. Eames is doomed. He slips his left hand down to rest across Arthur’s nearmost thigh, the tips of four fingers pressed against the inseam of his corn-coloured trousers. Then he looks at his hand there, and freezes.

He had expected to feel this move was a bad idea. He had not expected it to feel so much like facing a firing squad.

Arthur’s dimples disappear. He draws a breath, closes his eyes, goes perfectly still, says, painfully gently, “Is this a wise course of action, Mister Eames?”

Eames withdraws his hand like he’s been stung, feels a hot flush of embarrassment and self-recrimination, followed swiftly by a flood of sourness very close to devastation. It rises so fast in his throat he has to stop himself from coughing. 

“No, Arthur,” he says, very fast. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that, it’s not wise or professional, I’m an idiot, let’s just forget it completely, get back to work, I’m really extremely sorry.”

Arthur cracks an eye, looks at Eames.

“That wasn’t a no,” he says. He looks at his watch speculatively, purses his lips, then looks back at Eames, mutters a word that sounded very much like _finally_ , but couldn’t possibly have been, and starts to unbutton his own shirt.

“Arthur, I … “

“We have the whole day,” Arthur continues. “Let’s not rush this.”

“Right. Let’s not,” breathes Eames, who feels, right now, as if he’s drunk an inordinate amount of vintage Pol Roger and is practically vibrating with the effort of keeping still.

“So Eames. I’ve been told,” said Arthur, seriously, “that I have a tendency to withhold. Generally speaking.”

_No shit._

“It’s not a helpful strategy, sexually,” he says. “So I’d like to run through a few things, beforehand. Also —“ Eames watches a faint flush appear along the top of his ears — “I like talking. During.”

“Me too. Let’s run through some _things,_ then. Tell me what you like, Arthur.”

It’s a wonderfully loaded question, and the way Arthur’s face meets it—with lazy recognition and a deal of amusement, is extremely promising. “Your profession,” he says, “requires you to read people. I’ve heard you’re pretty good at it. What do you _think_ I like?”

“Well," says Eames, slowly considering, as if he’s just this very moment taken the subject under consideration.

Eames has not, just this very moment, taken the subject under consideration. Eames has spent a truly extraordinary amount of time thinking about this subject. In his imagination he’s fucked Arthur in many different ways in many different places: against wet walls in back alleys, in ratty motel singles, in canopied four poster beds that owe a little too much, if he’s honest, to sets from 1950s Hollywood historical epics he watched on Sunday afternoons when he was small. He has put Arthur in heels, yards of dyed hemp rope, leather, corsets, every restraint he can think of, and in a variety of extremely creative predicaments. He’s raised complicated patterns across Arthur’s skin. He’s made Arthur laugh, and plead, and scream.

And, because he’s Eames, wired the way he is, he’s imagined all those things with the tables turned. As a matter of fact, that is what his mind most often turns to, and ever since events in Idaho, the image of Arthur leaning over him, shirt-sleeves rolled to his elbows while he draws a blade across his skin—that has been Eames’ most infallible way of tipping himself over the edge _._

But he’s going to park all that, for now. Because considering how tight-wound Arthur is, the weight of responsibility he takes upon himself, the way he demurs to Cobb, the careful armour of his suits, Eames suspects Arthur’s excessively prickly demeanour covers a suite of deeply submissive tendencies. This suits Eames fine. Eames is a mercurial soul and Eames can be anything. Eames will be whoever Arthur needs. If Arthur needs to be taken in hand, that is exactly what he will do.

“It’s not furry costumes is it?” he says, reproachfully. “I’m the broadest-minded person, but I don’t know if you dressed as a mouse is really going to work for me.”

“ _Eames.”_

So this is a serious game.

Eames looks at him, then. Really looks at him. At how his eyes are dark, his nostrils a little flared. How he has tilted his chin fractionally upwards. It’s the tiniest of tells, but Eames thinks about all of those expensive ties. “Hmm,” he says, hoping. He shifts the sides of Arthurs shirt aside, lays a hand flat on his chest. Arthur’s heart is running, Eames calculates, about ninety beats a minute right now. He waits a little, then pushes with the heel of his hand—not hard, but enough to make Arthur blink a few times. Eames feels his heartrate kick up a notch, his breathing deepen. _Bingo_. “So my first guess is…” he says, trying very hard not to crow as he slips his hand higher until it rests lightly over Arthur’s throat, a perfectly symbolic gesture, and he watches Arthur’s eyes flutter closed, his mouth part into a small, satisfied smile.

“Good assumption. _”_ Arthur whispers, pleased. “A definite favourite. Best kept in-dream. What else?”

 _Christ._ It occurs to Eames that he might die before they’ve finished talking. He keeps his hand there, brushes at Arthur’s lips with the nails of his other. “You have a definite oral fixation. I’ve been jealous of your fountain pen”

“So you should be. Go on.”

“I’d like to fuck you, Arthur.”

He nods. “What else?”

Eames wonders at the tone of that last response. His suggestion wasn’t good enough. Something about this reminds him of all the times he’s held a forge specifically for Arthur to critique. He has to do better. For a while he tiptoes aroundgeneralities, then thinks, _what the hell_ , and begins to offer sexual possibilities that have less to do with what he thinks Arthur might like and a lot more to do with what he might like to do to Arthur. It all works for Arthur anyway. All of it—bar one misstep. When Eames suggests Arthur might enjoy a little humiliation, perhaps it would work for him to be called a whore, Arthur shuts down so fast it’s like a door slamming in Eames’ face. “I’m not a fan of that myself, in all honesty,” Eames adds, hastily. “It’s just, you know, some people …”

“Not me,” says Arthur. “Not ever.”

“Never,” agrees Eames, and bats away the itch to know why.

Twice during this delightful verbal foreplay Eames coaxes something that’s almost a moan from Arthur, and it’s not solely because he’s become brave enough to put a little pressure upon Arthur’s cock through the thin wool of his trousers. The first came early on, after Eames suggests a good throatfuck might be right up Arthur’s street, and the second was much later, after Eames, with something like awe, says, _Oh Arthur. You_ _want me to REALLY hurt you_.

Eventually he sits back, feeling very pleased with himself.

“How did I do?” he says.

Arthur straightens himself to sit back upright in the chair, stretches, rolls his neck.

“Not bad.”

“Not bad? What’s that mean?”

“Six out of ten.”

“ _Six_?”

“I’m quite surprised by your assumptions.”

“What assumptions?”

“How limited they are. You shouldn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger,” Arthur murmurs, reaching over to grasp his jaw. From the look on his face, Eames is pretty sure he’s about to be kissed, and is so perfectly ready for it. But instead, Arthur drives the tips of his fingers and thumb into a series of pressure points Eames didn’t know existed—well, not like _this_ —making lights bloom behind his suddenly watering eyes, and his brain shorts out like foil in a microwave. Arthur digs his fingers in harder, Eames opens his mouth and gasps, and as the air leaves him, Arthur leans in, gives his bottom lip a sharp nip, then lets him go.

He shrugs. “ _Keep up, Eames_.”

Eames has caught up. Oh yes. Eames feels like a five year old rich-kid Vermonter running down the stairs on a snowy Christmas morning, about to get _all_ the presents.

“Shall we?” says Arthur, reaching for Eames’ fly.

“Wait! Aren’t you going to ask me what _I_ like?” Eames says.

Arthur grins. “No need. I already know.”

Eames opens his mouth to ask how, but shuts it again. He has a horrible feeling Arthur has been researching the matter, and there is a lot of data out there.


End file.
